


Sons & Daughters

by siriuslydraco



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-04-03 16:29:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14000091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siriuslydraco/pseuds/siriuslydraco
Summary: And in our hearts we still pray for sons and daughters





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoy jonsa fam

The red stain on the sheet is so familiar looking now that her heart takes a while before it sinks. It's ugly and blotchy and lumped with the horrific aftermath of what could have been, and she's crying before she knows it. Her tears are hot and quick and they sting as they fill up her blue eyes and roll down her cheeks.

It's the sixth time now. Six children that will never fully grow inside her belly. Six children she will never see, or name, or hold in her arms and kiss when they wail late at night. Six times she has failed to give her husband what he wants.

A scream that is tainted with pain and anguish fills the stone walled room she now feels trapped in, and behind the depths of her fragile bones her heart shatters and breaks like it has fives times before. Madness and maternal despair take her over and her hands and knees shake as she crawls onto the bed, fisting the sheets and letting her face become stained with the blood she had lost during the night. She doesn't care at all that she lays on top of it, or that the blood is now soaking through her thin night dress. Her red hair- red like the bleeding sun- fans out on the white sheets with the curly ends now drenched in the crimson patch. 

She wails harshly, and loudly, and awfully and it's how Jon finds her. Heart hammering and breathing laboured as he bursts into the door with a string of guards- grey eyes falling to the image of his fragile wife lying in a pool of blood. 

* * *

"I won't be gone long" he tells her, grey eyes tracing her solemn and pale face. She sits beneath the weirwood as if she is part of it, stiff and bone white and with eyes red and tired. She has cried for the past three days and no matter how much Jon coaxed her, she would not eat. Not even when he had asked for lemon cakes to be made for her. Her eyes just stare blankly at the pool of water that Jon stands near, the last remnants of ice melting from the edges. Winter is almost over but she only ever feels the cold- no warmth able to radiate from her. 

"How long?" she asks him gravely but still she does not meet his eyes, just stares at the green grass that pokes its head from the melting snow. Sansa feels Jon move in front of her like a dark shadow of black. She hasn't been able to look at him for days now, she can not meet his eyes of Stark grey. It's like this each time she loses a babe and for weeks she feels as if she has let him down immensely, and even though he begs on his knees each time and kisses her tears away there is always a hole left in her heart.

She fears one day she'll no longer have one, that the tear in her heart will get bigger and bigger with each child she loses and she will no longer be able to love even Jon. She'll be a creature of emptiness, destroyed bitterly by longing. 

"Just a day, my love" his voice is soft, too soft for a man who just lost his sixth chance of an heir. He has always been so gentle and so passionate with her despite everything. After Ramsay she had felt like no man would ever want her body like Jon did. _A bruised and barren body._  

But Jon had wanted her, wanted her like air and after he had been crowned King in the North he had vowed to keep her by his side for always, and had cited his love for her in front of this very weirwood. They had been married then, when the secrets of his lineage had been revealed, and when he had left her to fight in the war she had feared that the babe in her belly would be fatherless. But it was Jon who had lost something when he had rode back to Winterfell to find Sansa no longer carried their child. 

"I need you here, Jon. I don't want you to go. Can't you send Lord Davos or someone else to see to this village?" her lips that are normally so pink and pale are chewed and grey, and her face is so crumpled looking that Jon fears it will crack into a million pieces if she were to attempt a smile. But she hasn't smiled. Not for days. 

"This town has been pillaged by savages. I'm their King and I must see to the townspeoples safety" Jon kneels down in front of her and lets his leather gloved hands take her long and pale ones. Despite her aching state she doesn't flinch or pull away from him. He is often gone on long journeys that break them apart for days, and more often than Jon likes he has to pile up heaps of bodies that his Aunts estranged Dothraki savages leave behind. Some had stayed when she had won the war and was crowned Queen. But her limitations had set some of them sour and they had taken to pillaging Westeros. She does flinch this time at the thought of Daenerys Targaryen. She also wants Jon to have an heir. 

"Yes, but you are also my husband" her eyes are sad and downcast but he puts a finger under her chin and lifts her face to his. Those blue eyes that Jon has drowned in nights upon nights close sharply. 

"And your husband will not be gone long" Jon tells her with his lips brushing the tip of her nose "I promise it will only be a day. And you should be delighted I'm gone, most women would be glad to be rid of their brutish husbands for a day" 

"I'd never want to be rid of you" she sighs when she feels his lips near the corner of her mouth, slowly kissing her soft skin and making her aching heart slowly patch itself up inside her. 

"Aye, and I'd never wish to be rid of you either sweet girl" he whispers to her and she can not help but lean into his touch when he cups her face and presses his mouth to hers. She knows what his words meant. That despite it all he still loves her. Despite the fact she can't keep a babe he still wants her. No matter what. 

* * *

She had watched him ride out with four men as she stood on the ramparts of Winterfell castle, her cloak fanning around her with the soft breeze and her heart already craving his warm embrace. And for a day she had been restless without him. Brienne had stood watch outside her door that night and had walked with her the day after, those watchful eyes of sapphire blue never leaving her. 

She paces with her now along the stony edges of the castle's battlements, their footprints indenting in the thin layer of snow that covers it. She is a quiet woman, Brienne of Tarth, and much like Sansa she pines for a man leagues away. Despite their outward differences Sansa guesses that her and the Lady Brienne have more in common than they'd like to discuss. She had become a solid confidante of Sansa's throughout the years of war and ravage, and was there every single time she had miscarried a babe. Each and every time. And Brienne can see the lines of despair wither and age the young and beautiful Queen. 

 "How are you fairing, my queen?" Brienne's voice is rough among the softness of the snow but Sansa comforts in it despite the fact her Lady knight has asked her this since dawn. 

"Better, Lady Brienne" she answers with a dry smile and watches as the tall woman bristles a little. She's not a lady, so she tells Sansa, but the fiery haired queen thinks of her as nothing else. Even though Brienne can wield a sword and speak with the harshness of a man she is as gentle and kind as the ladies in songs. Sansa calls her Lady Brienne and will not cease to. 

"If you need to return inside we can go back, my queen. I fear its too cold outside for you" her constant worry is not grating, but endearing and Sansa relishes in the warmth that radiates from her tall protector. Sansa just gestures to the thick furs that cloak her body- black and heavy and emblazoned with the Stark sigil- they are Jon's and not her own. They make her feel close to him somehow- like his arms are around her. 

"The cold doesn't bother me, Lady Brienne. Not like it used to" she tells her with her blue eyes scanning the horizon that disappears into a smoky grey line in the distance. She'll stand here until he returns. He had said a day, and now the second is almost over. How much longer will he make her wait? "And you know as well as any, my lady, that I have been through this before. I will fair just fine. Just like always" 

Sansa's smile is only half hearted and does not reach her eyes like it used to, and Lady Brienne can not help but feel a deep sadness within her for this young lady. How cruel the gods were for taking her whole family away, and now they curse her with the inability to make her own. 

"You will be happy again, Sansa. The gods will grant you what you wish, you'll see" her Lady knight offers kindly, and Sansa only gives her a smile in return. She does not wish to tell Brienne how she has cried silently in the godswood almost every day since she married Jon. How she had wept every time she had lost another of his children. 

"I'm sure the gods will answer my prayers, and give Jon and I children when they see that that the time is right" it's a line she's repeated to many lords and northern ladies at feasts when they have come to her and offered their sympathies. She knows how they whisper that she is the barren queen, the one who will not provide the North with an heir as strong as Jon or as honourable as her father, or as brave as Robb. She repeats the line, yet she still believes the gods will answer. 

There is a flurry of movement below in the courtyard and the familiar grinding of the metal gate is sounded throughout the castle. Her hands shake a little as they grip the stone walls and peer over the edge, and her heart races in her chest when she spots him atop his black horse. _Jon_. 

Conversation is long abandoned as she runs down the wooden steps to get to the courtyard that men now gather in, eager to take the company's weary horses to the stable and to see their king back from his short journey. Sansa stands with them, Lady Brienne behind her like a looming protective shadow and watches as Jon slowly comes into view. 

He looks tired, she notes immediately, like he hasn't slept for weeks even though it's only been a couple of days. She fears deep within her heart that something awful had happened on their journey. She counts the men. Five. Five had left and five had returned. She could at least thank the gods for that. 

"Sansa" he breathes out when he jumps from his horse and embraces her. Long gone is the consciousness of affection. The northern men are used to their king and queen embracing and outwardly showing their love. Sansa does not care much anymore about courtesy of that kind. 

"Jon, I'm so glad you've returned" she tells him after placing a gentle yet loving kiss to his lips "You were gone longer than a day"

His eyes that are as grey as the northern skies look at her with a certain sort of panic in them that makes her heart lurch. One strong hand takes her waist and the other cups her face, his rough fingers tracing soft patterns on her cold skin. 

"The village had been burnt" Jon explains to her, his hand squeezing the soft skin of her waist "there was no one left, we thought everyone had been killed and then...." 

She muses for him to continue and can see that Brienne eyes him curiously from where she stands near Jon's shoulder. Jon does not speak again but ushers for them to follow him to where Lord Davos sits on top of a dappled steed. In his lap his hands are clutched around a swad of blankets and as Sansa approaches her heart stops when she sees the tiniest pair of hands stretch out from the folds of fabric. 

"We were about to leave when I heard her crying. She was underneath a hay cart. I would guess her mother had hid her there. It's why we were delayed, my love. We had to go in search of milk for her" Jon tells them but Sansa can barely hear him speaking. She is too intent at looking at this tiny babe that is wrapped up in the scratchy looking blankets. She is no bigger than a newborn babe, and Sansa guesses she must only be a few days old. 

Her eyes are closed and her tiny pink mouth is half open to let her breaths in and out. How content she looks, Sansa thinks, how beautiful and peaceful she is. She can feel Jon watching her from the corner of her eye and is aware then that everyone is looking at her. Do they all know that not a week ago she had lost her very own child? That it had bled from her during the night. 

"Where is her mother?" Sansa all but whispers, her hands aching to reach out and touch the sleeping babe, to stroke her soft cheeks and downy hair on top of her head. 

"Dead I'd presume, my queen" it's Davos who speaks, and Sansa swallows a lump in her throat at his words. _So you and I have something in common, sweet baby._  

"She needs a nurse, your Grace" Brienne inputs and all Sansa can do in response is nod her head. She watches then as Davos hands the tall knight the baby, the bundle looking odd and out of place in her arms. _It wouldn't look like that in my arms_ , Sansa thinks. 

Jon gives Sansa a look that is unreadable, perhaps it's apologetically the way he looks at her. Or maybe it's pity in his eyes that Sansa can see, but she shoves that thought from her mind. She doesn't want to be pitied. Pitied because she can't have what Jon had just saved from a burning village. 

She watches him walk away, a dark shadow against the stone of the castle and she can't help but feel like he had just brought her the very thing she had asked the gods for beneath the weirwood this morning. There is a soft tickle that sets itself on her eyelashes, and when she casts her eyes towards the sky she sees it. _Snow_. 

She takes it as an answer from _them_. From the gods that rest above her, and she thinks that perhaps they are not so cruel. That after all this time, they had answered her prayers. 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> these quiet hours are turning to years

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guys thank you so much for the positive feedback on my first chapter! I'm so glad you liked it and please enjoy this next chapter x  
> also this is based on the song Sons & Daughters by Allman Brown and Liz Lawrence

The great hall is darkening with the wash of moonlight that filters through the window when she finds him. He stands by the dwindling fire like a shadow of night, his black clothes and hair blending into the curtain of darkness. The candles in the sconces that are soldered to the walls throw his shape across the floor, and when Sansa looks quickly she can see the shape of dragon wings extend from his back. She looks away quickly and lets her blue eyes rest on his broad back instead of on the shadows that play tricks on her. 

 "Jon?" she adresses him timidly, and he turns around to face her with a soft smile on his face. Her hand is taken in two of his, and a gentle kiss is pressed to the back of it. He's so gentle with her. Always so gentle. 

_Someone brave, and gentle, and strong_. The words seem to whisper to her with the crackle of the fire, and they make her shiver at the memory. 

"My lady wife" Jon answers her with another smile- but does she imagine the sad glint in those Stark eyes? 

"I've been to see the child" her words are heavy where they lay between them- resting in the place of grief that both of them have chosen not to venture in again. Not after Sansa had lost their third baby. Since then they have never spoken of their lost children- instead choosing to leave it in the past. The past, she thinks, nothing good ever comes from looking to the past. 

Jon studies her then with a look of curiosity in his eyes that makes her feel as if he is delving into her mind- his hands that grasp her smaller one goes slack. Jon has always had the ability to know what intentions Sansa has, and she knows now as his grey eyes look into hers that he knows exactly why she has come here. _You know nothing, Jon Snow_. But perhaps he knows more than he allows people to see. 

Sansa had made the devastating walk from her chambers to the kitchens- limbs shaking as she had trailed down the stairs. Her breath had almost ceased when she had eyed the nurse with the swaddle in her arms; rocking back and forth and making the babe coo as she fell to sleep. Looking at the simplicity of such an act and at the beauty of a sleeping baby had made her decide then and there that she hated the gods. Old or New she _hated_ them. How dare they decide it was her destiny to lose her family to horrors? How dare they allow for her to be raped under the cruel hands of a monster? But she despised them now with a newfound vengence for never allowing her to keep what she wanted to possess most. 

The sight of the nursing babe had almost made her sob where she stood- behind the heavy door under the shade of darkness. She had slowly crept into the light then, startling the nurse and causing her to stutter out a soft _Mi'lady_. She had admired the babe as she had hovered over it, her trembling hands coming to take one of the infants curled ones. How tiny and soft they were- how right it felt to hold. Sansa will never admit to anyone how she had left the kitchen and sobbed violently in her rooms after the babe had grasped her tiny fingers around one of Sansa's and smiled in sleep. Actually _smiled_. Sansa was not aware babes that young could muster any sort of expression like that. 

"Is she well?" Jon's voice calls her back to the present and she nods feebly. 

"Very well" she lets a ghost of a smile cross her face, yet she finds somehow that it is not so forced as it usually is. She notices how Jon's eyes flicker all over her face to try and catch any sign of sadness. 

"As soon as she is stronger we shall find suitable lodgings for her. There is a farmer near the King's Road that would foster her I'm sure" Jon explains, taking a step away from Sansa and turning back around to face the fire. Sansa is aware then how fast her heart rate speeds up. How can she bare to part with this little child? This new babe without a mother? Jon would surely not allow her to part from another child when she so recently parted with theirs? 

" _Jon_ -" 

"My love, I know what you wish to ask me. I knew it as soon as I saw you look at her, but we cannot" Jon is kingly then as he refuses what she has not even voiced aloud yet, and Sansa feels the creeping desperation trickle all over her body. She is wearing her night shift that is ivory silk from Dorne and a light cloak, but she feels dreadfully warm and somehow wishes she could burst out of her own skin. 

"You would turn her away? After I have lost another child? You would be that cruel?" Sansa's voice is just a whisper and as Jon looks at her with the shadows flickering across her face he wonders if his lady wife has shifted to a ghost. She _is_ but a ghost of the woman he married- now harrowed and shaken- but she is still hauntingly beautiful. Even after she had escaped the abuse of Joffrey and Ramsay she had remained strong, and Jon had often wondered then when she would break like a shard of obsidian. But she never had. She had walked the halls of Winterfell like her Lady Mother before her- all flaming hair and piercing eyes and had made even the most brutal of Lords bend to her. 

As her husband stares at her now- deep circles under her eyes and her lips dry from chewing them- he knows that _now_ she has finally broken. All because she can not bear Jon's children. 

It has taken its toll on the King too although he does not bear his grief upon his face like the Queen. Instead Jon has paced the hallways of the castle with Ghost when he can not sleep, or he puts his anger with the Gods into battle or training with the smaller boys of Wintertown. He too has a void inside of him that can not be patched up, and not even his red haired beauty who he loves so deeply can fill it. It is a different type of emptiness, one that only his own child can fill. He had left those dreams of fatherhood behind him when he had left for the Wall, but since he had returned to Winterfell and married his cousin he has wished for it more deeply than anything else. 

How he wishes he had a son to teach sword fighting and archery to, a son he could ride with through the dense woods and hunt with. How he aches to have a daughter with her mothers hair and his eyes who he could dance with jovially at feasts. A daughter he could smile fondly at as she sits sewing with her mother. A daughter he could protect from all the young handsome lords and princes when she is old enough to court. How he wishes for that. 

He thinks then of the babe that lies asleep somewhere in the castle. Could he grow to love another mans child? A child his own wife did not carry? Would he fight for her honour from a king or a prince? The questions are answered silently in his head. _Yes_. He very well could. 

"I never wish to be cruel with you, Sansa. Gods you must know that by now" he tells his wife as he turns to face her "but we are not some common folk that can take in any child we wish. We must have our own heirs" 

"I have tried to give you children, Jon. Six times I have been granted them and six times I have lost them. I know now as I stand here that I will never have a child of my own to love. Let me love this child as I would have loved our other children" her blue eyes are captivatingly desperate, and for a moment Jon is transfixed with how the flames dance in them. 

"Sansa this child is not our own, and never will be. How could we take her in and allow for her to be a Lady? She would not be accepted by the Northerners, as I was not accepted as the bastard child of Winterfell" Jon explains to her, his voice deep with memory. Sansa looks away then as she is reminded of how cruel and cold she was towards Jon when they were children, how unaccepting and unforgiving her Mother was to him. How she wishes her mother had known the truth. Jon is no bastard, but a Targaryen prince. 

"We would not have to tell anyone. No one knows of the child save for Ser Davos, Brienne and the wet nurse. Everyone in the North thinks I still carry your child. Let them think this is your child" his wife is stricken with so much grief it has made her mad. He is sure of it. 

Would they believe the child to be his? Would they grow suspicious of her claim when she would grow older? Just like folk had become suspicious of King Joffrey's. 

"You ask a great thing of me, Sansa. To bring a child and a kingdom into a position of falsehood" Jon tells her and his heart plummets when he sees Sansa's bottom lip quiver. 

"I wish to be a mother, there is nothing false in that" Sansa all but whispers to him, the beginning of tears forming in her eyes. 

His thoughts are loud and vivacious in his head, his honour and duty screaming at him to let this babe be fostered in a small keep or a farm somewhere else. Not in the home of the King in the North. No good had come of his father fostering Theon Greyjoy. And no good had come from taking Jon in and allowing him to grow with the false idea of who he was in his head. But the desperation of Sansa outweighs it all, and so does his own desire to fill the empty void in his heart. 

"Shall we go and see her?" he asks the Queen, and she is a flurry of ivory silk from Dorne and red hair as she flings herself at him. She is soft and smells of lemons as he holds her, and he wishes to never let her go for she is his world and he delights that he can hold her like this once again. She had been so distant from him after losing the last babe not a week ago. 

She whispers her thanks to him a thousand times and presses her lips all over his face, his neck, his own mouth after each grateful word. He _loves_ her. Gods he loves her, and he knows that she loves him with a desperation that is tangible. He could never understand why such a woman would love this dark and brooding ghost of a man, but he accepts it all the same. He knew from the moment they had married under the heart tree that he would do _anything_ to make her happy. He had went to war for her once, and had taken back this castle. This is just another thing he has decided to do to secure her joy. 

"She needs a name" Sansa whispers later as she holds the tiny infant in her arms. Jon had smiled so wide at the sight of a babe finally in her arms that he thought his face would wrinkle like the bark of a weirwood.

He doesn't know why he answers her so quickly without a single thought, but as he does he knows it's right. 

"Lyanna" he tells her, and Sansa looks up from where she is seated on the edge of their bed- Ghost lapping at her feet and the swaddle of blankets in her arms. The sight of it is just _right_ , Jon thinks, and it makes his guilt of taking someone else's child subside a little. 

"Lyanna" Sansa repeats with a soft smile, and with that it is decided. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you all liked! the next chapter will be up soon hopefully and it might be a little heartbreaking so prepare yourselves! thank you for all the comments on part one x


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